SMSM ‘09 No. 19: My Sister’s Keeper

After seeing Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, I thought nothing would ever cheer me up. So I figured I’d conclude a fine afternoon’s Theater Hopping Double Feature© by sneaking in to see My Sister’s Keeper, which could be alternately titled “that cancer girl movie where Cameron Diaz yells a lot.”

And My Sister’s Keeper is, indeed, that. Though that betrays the fact that it does a half decent job of accomplishing one of its goals (telling a coherent story), and an excellent job accomplishing the other (making ladies cry for an hour and 45 minutes).

The film centers on a girl dying of leukemia, and the trials her illness causes for her family, particularly her sister (Abigail Breslin), who was conceived in vitro as part of some mad scientist experiment to make spare parts for her ill sister (though the film only scratches the surface of examining just how fucked up that is). When Breslin grows tired of having no say in determining what happens to her own body, she sues her parents (Jason Patric and a “this is my serious face” Cameron Diaz) for medical emancipation. The film’s big twist reveals a master plan hidden under all the litigation.

My Sister’s Keeper is dark, lightened only by a few minutes of comic relief from smarmy lawyer Alec Baldwin, but it’s dark in the kind of way where you know everything will have some kind of positive resolution. Director Nick Cassavetes (chip off the old block, that guy) mines the uplifting moment out of every scene and bloated musical montage (the film actually has a scene scored with a down tempo version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”).

Cassavetes, however, moves in line with the sensibilities of his core audience; I’m just not part of it. Despite a jumbled timeline, he manages to keep the story together, though perhaps with less emotional depth than he hoped for.

But, in some sense, that’s for the best. My Sister’s Keeper may make you cry, but it won’t make you feel. And that, I think, is just how its audience wants it.

Film: My Sister’s Keeper
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Stars: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Jason Patric, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva, Evan Ellingson

Viewing situation: Weekday matinee, small crowd; digital projection
My grade (out of 10): 4
Rotten Tomatoes average: 44%

Next up: Public Enemies

Summer Movie Suicide Mission ’09: Seeing them all, all summer long. Follow Summer Movie Suicide Mission on Twitter: @SMSM09. Check out the full list to date here.

SMSM ‘09 No. 18: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

See that picture up there? That’s one of the reasons Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is terrible. That little fucker is some kind of enjoyment-killing tree sloth fucking thing that leads the Ice Age gang through some mystery cave where dinosaurs are still alive, despite all historical evidence to the contrary. You see, science had led us to believe that dinosaurs were eradicated by an ice age. Presumably the same ice age that Ray Romano’s wooly mammoth and Denis Leary’s sabre-toothed tiger have been living in for three fucking movies now.

Anyway, that little prick’s name is Buck, and he’s voiced by Simon Pegg, who most of the time is hilarious. Except when he plays Buck. Buck is some kind of unholy cross between Ralph Brown and Crocodile Dundee. With an eye patch, so you know he’s hardcore. Buck is the worst.

The pre-existing characters aren’t much better. Dawn of the Dinosaurs is a phone-in job of the highest order. Romano, who sounds bored in his natural timbre, is near comatose here. Queen Latifah can’t emote properly. John Leguizamo should have hung it up once he made all that Super Mario bank. And Leary’s seems to always sleepwalk through his more family-friendly projects.

And despite the obvious historical fuck off involved in the introduction of dinosaurs, the real problem with their inclusion is that it squanders everything the Ice Age franchise had going for it. The original Ice Age, which is actually a fine family picture, was captivating not because it had particularly appealing characters or a plot, but because it inhabited a desolate, solid-white universe, in a transitional period in global history. Very little of what appears in Ice Age had been imagined in quite the same way before. It was novel, occasionally funny, and the sequel The Meltdown piggybacked nicely off its success.

For a third installment, shaking up the formula may have been a pretty good idea in principle, but in execution it removes any goodwill one might have had toward the franchise. Especially since all the jokes are stale rehashings of what we’ve heard before. And the use of digital 3D accomplishes only a cosmetic improvement on a visual landscape that’s less inspired (and less fully imagined) than what the producers of Ice Age captured the first time around.

And the stupid squirrel that fights over the acorn with the lady squirrel to the tune of “You’ll Never Find”? I’ve seen that sequence so many times on TV, in trailers, and in the actual film, I never want to listen to Lou Rawls again.

And that’s the real damn shame.

Film: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Director: Carlos Saldanha and Mike Thurmeier (yep, it took two directors to fuck this up just right)
Stars: Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Simon Pegg, Seann William Scott

Viewing situation: Weekday matinee, small crowd; digital 3D
My grade (out of 10): 1
Rotten Tomatoes average: 44%

Next up: My Sister’s Keeper (part two of a Theater Hopping Double Feature ©!)

Summer Movie Suicide Mission ’09: Seeing them all, all summer long. Follow Summer Movie Suicide Mission on Twitter: @SMSM09. Check out the full list to date here.